Arguments Against A Sacramental View Of The Love Feast

. This metaphorical language may also argue against a sacramental viewpoint for the people participated in the Love Feast and partook of Communion that often followed. For these participants and leaders, it did not yield a spiritual benefit. Instead, they were twice-dead. This contrasts to a sacramental understanding of the passage. In summary, Jude is speaking of the Love Feast specifically and Communion potentially. The greatest value in these passages is in realizing, even early in Christian worship and practice, apostates had infiltrated and even lead as inauthentic shepherds. In keeping with Jude’s exhortation, the appropriate reaction is to “contend for the faith.” Luther may have been thinking of the Catholic Church when he penned
Jesus was illustrating belief, what it means to appropriate Him by faith (John 6:40). He expressed the same truth negatively (John 6:53) and then positively (John 6:54).” This would mean that when John is speaking of the body and blood that he is actually talking about Jesus being the bread of life not the individual elements of the Sacrament. Johann Albrecht Bengel also concurs that although mention of physical flesh and blood, “is clearly accommodation to the miracle that precedes it.” This would mean that Constable and Bengel both tether the whole dialog back to the original meaning of the bread of life and the miracle of feeding the five thousand not
“Baptists typically interpret John 6:53-56 metaphorically.” Others Baptists call it symbolic. Another distinguishing mark of many Baptists is the rejection of the sacramental meaning of the Lord’s Supper and the preference to call it an Ordinance. This would redirect the attention and authority to other passages in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 1 Corinthians. A sacramental understanding of the Lord’s Supper is clearly drawn from John 6. “The Catholic Church teaches that these sacraments in themselves actually convey grace to people (without requiring faith from the person’s participating in them).” Therefore, Baptists typically uses the title Ordinance because the meaning of this word directs the practice to Christ’s ordination of them. Instead of understanding it as a sacrament. The term Ordinance is the preferred term because it does not “strip the real value, but it does not add meaning or value to something that surpasses the original